1) Secretly I have been coveting armwarmers, and so I have started teaching myself again. It has now been three weeks of casting on and then trying to figure out what went wrong. Turned out I was somehow looping the yarn 'round my thumb the wrong way and casting on a double stitch instead of a single one. Which would be why my 25 stitches ended up somewhere around the neighbourhood of 50. *headdesk* Finally got it right on Saturday. (YAY!)

2) Hence why I said 'try.' *g* Also, a hat made of nice soft cottony yarn on big chunky needles would go much much faster than my tiny thin yarn on tiny needles (because of course I want fine armwarmers, not chunky ones, sigh).